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Introduction

Digging soil from the bottoms of lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water is called dredging. Dredges, which are mounted on floats, are used to do such work to deepen, widen, or straighten channels in rivers, harbors, or bays; to build dikes and levees; and to prepare foundations for bridges, lighthouses, and other structures. Dredging is also used to dig mineral deposits, diamonds, and marine life of commercial value from river bottoms and soils deposited by rivers. Power shovels are used to dig up dry land.

Dredges

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

There are two types of dredge: the mechanically operated and hydraulically operated. Mechanical dredges, which are similar to land-based excavating machines, were the first to be developed and can be classified as dipper, grapple, or ladder dredges.

The most common is the dipper dredge. The typical American dredge, it is widely used for river improvement and in digging drainage canals. It consists of a hoisting engine with a swinging crane. A boom hangs from the crane end with a great thrusting shovel, or dipper. Vertical rods called spuds are lowered into the lake or river bed to steady the dredge. The boom lowers the dipper to the bottom. A cable draws the dipper forward into the material to be raised. When the dipper is full, it is lifted clear of the water and swung around to the desired position for dumping. The bottom of the dipper is hinged. Pulling a cable attached to a latch lets the bottom open, and the load drops out. The dipper dredge can even rip through soft rock without blasting. The usual dipper holds from one half to 6 cubic yards (11 cubic meters), or about 15 tons, to each dipperful.

The clamshell grapple dredge has a grab bucket composed of two great scoops, hinged at the top, which can be closed like a clamshell. The open bucket is lowered from the end of a crane. The two halves are then closed, and the filled bucket is raised by means of wire ropes. An orange-peel grapple dredge has a bucket made of three or four triangular blades with sharp tips. The tips bite under the material to be raised. Grapple dredges are operated in deep water.

The operation of dipper and grapple dredges is intermittent, while a ladder dredge digs trenches and other narrow cuts continuously. It uses sharp-edged buckets carried on an endless chain or wheel. The assembly makes a first cut to the desired depth. Then a power plant draws it along, and it continues the cut as it moves.

Mechanical dredges are unable to transport materials for long distances. They are not self-propelled and are low in productivity. Their advantage lies in their usefulness in dredging in restricted locations such as ditches and jetties, and they can be equipped with devices to treat and drain water from dredged material in mining operations.

There are three basic types of hydraulically operated dredges—dustpan, hydraulic cutterhead, and self-propelled hopper dredges. The self-propelled dustpan dredge, which resembles a large vacuum cleaner or dustpan, consists of a dredge pump that draws a mixture of water and the material to be dredged—called the dredging spoil—through a suction pipe and pumps it to a disposal area through a floating pipeline. The suction heads are outfitted with high-velocity water jets for softening the bottom, but they cannot cut through hard or compacted material. They are suitable only for dredging soft materials.

The hydraulic cutterhead dredge is similar to a dustpan dredge but is equipped with a rotating cutter at the end of the suction pipe. It can be used effectively in all types of alluvial materials and compacted deposits such as clay and hardpan. Larger cutterhead dredges are also used to cut through and remove soft rock materials without blasting.

A self-propelled hopper dredge has a molded ship’s hull and functions similarly to plain suction-type dredges like dustpan dredges. The bottom material is sucked up by dredge pumps through a dragarm, and the mixture of water and dredging spoil is then deposited in storage compartments called hoppers. After filling the hoppers, the dredge proceeds to a disposal site to empty the hoppers through bottom doors or by pumping the water-spoil mixture through a pipeline.

Power Shovels

Power shovels use a dipper and a power plant set on a turntable, which, in turn, is mounted on a caterpillar tread. With the turntable, the operator can dig in one spot, lift the dug up material, swing the scoop, and dump the material into a waiting truck or railroad car. The capacity of dippers normally ranges from 1 to 20 cubic yards (0.75 to 15 cubic meters), though much larger units with a capacity of up to 200 cubic yards (150 cubic meters) are used in mining operations. Power shovels driven by gasoline or diesel engines or by electric motors have almost entirely replaced earlier steam shovels.

Another type of earth-moving machine is the bulldozer, which is basically a tractor equipped with a front-mounted curved blade or mold board. Bulldozers are versatile and are used for various earth-moving operations such as clearing land and pushing soil and rocks from place to place. The volume of soil or rock that can be moved by one push is up to 20 cubic yards (15 cubic meters) for a large bulldozer. A crawler tractor-type bulldozer can clear brush from more than 3 acres (1.2 hectares) in one hour.

A specialized machine called a ladder trencher, or ditcher, is effective for opening trenches for utility lines, telephone cables, drainage and sewer lines, and the like. It consists of two main components: a crawler, or rubber-tired carrier, and a digging mechanism. Depending on the soil condition and the depth of the trench to be excavated, the trencher can move at a speed of up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) per hour. It has a long boom, and an endless chain rotates along the boom. Buckets or clamshells attached to this chain dig at the bottom of the trench, bring up excavated material, and unload it onto a conveyer while the machine moves slowly along. The width of the excavated trench ranges between 18 and 60 inches (46 and 152 centimeters). Ladder trenches can be used for digging depths of up to 20 feet (6 meters).

Another machine with a wide radius of action uses a dragline, which is a lifting crane with a drag bucket. A long boom flings out the bucket on the line and drops it into the material to be excavated. The machine then pulls in the line, drawing in the bucket until it is filled, lifts it, and swings it with the crane boom to dump the material wherever desired. The size of the scoop is normally between 1/2 and 3 cubic yards (0.38 and 2.3 cubic meters). A clamshell is a modified lift crane with the hook replaced by a clam bucket. It is suitable for raising loose material such as the removal of silt from bottoms of rivers, lakes, or harbors. It is also used to unload ore, coal, and crushed stone (seecoal). Draglines and clamshells are land-based machines that are similar to dipper and clamshell dredges.

Devices that carry buckets on an endless chain are used to unload sand or gravel from ships and barges. The unloading of grain is normally carried out by large suction heads or dustpans. The loading of grain silos and the unloading of ships’ holds is accomplished with these giant vacuum cleaners.

Gabor Karadi

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